Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. In 1990, she rose to fame with the release of "Vision of Love" from her eponymous debut album. The album produced four chart-topping singles in the US and began what would become a string of commercially successful albums which solidified the singer as Columbia's highest selling act. Carey and Boyz II Men spent a record sixteen weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1995–1996 with "One Sweet Day", which remains the longest-running number-one song in US chart history. Following a contentious divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and traversed towards hip hop with the release of Butterfly (1997). In 1998, she was honored as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards and subsequently named the best-selling female artist of the millennium in 2000. Carey parted with Columbia in 2000, and signed a record-breaking $100 million recording contract with Virgin Records America. In the weeks prior to the release of her film Glitter and its accompanying soundtrack in 2001, she suffered a physical and emotional breakdown and was hospitalized for severe exhaustion. The project was poorly received and led to a general decline in the singer's career. Carey's recording contract was bought out for $50 million by Virgin and she signed a multi-million dollar deal with Island Records the following year. After a relatively unsuccessful period, she returned to the top of music charts with The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). The album became the best-selling album in the US and the second best-seller worldwide in 2005 and produced "We Belong Together", which became her most successful single of the 2000s, and was later named "Song of the Decade" by Billboard. Carey once again ventured into film with a well-received supporting role in Precious (2009), and was awarded the "Breakthrough Performance Award" at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Throughout her career, Carey has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. According to the RIAA, she is the third-best-selling female artist in the United States, with 63.5 million certified albums. With the release of "Touch My Body" (2008), Carey gained her 18th number-one single in the United States, more than any other solo artist. In 2012, the singer was ranked second on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". Aside from her commercial accomplishments, Carey has won 5 Grammy Awards, 19 World Music Awards, 11 American Music Awards, and 14 Billboard Music Awards and has been consistently credited with inspiring a generation of singers. __FORCETOC__ Early life was born in Huntington, New York. Her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was of African American and Afro-Venezuelan descent, while her mother, Patricia (née Hickey), is of Irish descent. The last name Carey was adopted by her Venezuelan grandfather, Francisco Núñez, after immigrating to New York. Patricia was an occasional opera singer and vocal coach before she met Alfred in 1960. As he began earning a living as an aeronautical engineer, the couple wed later that year, and moved into a small suburb in New York. After their elopement, Patricia's family disowned her for marrying a black man. Carey later explained that growing up, she felt neglected by her maternal family, which affected her greatly. In the years between the births of Carey's older sister Alison and herself, the Carey family struggled within the community due to their ethnicity. Carey's name was derived from the song "They Call the Wind Maria," originally from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. When Carey was three, her parents divorced. "It's been difficult for me, moving around so much, having to grow up by myself... my parents divorced. And I always felt kind of different from everybody else in my neighborhoods. I was a different person ethnically. And sometimes, that can be a problem. If you look a certain way, everybody goes 'White girl', and I'd go, 'No, that's not what I am.'" —Carey, on her childhood After their separation, Alison moved in with her father, while the other two children, Mariah and brother Morgan, remained with their mother. Carey would grow apart from her father, and would later stop seeing him altogether. By the age of four, Carey recalled that she had begun to sneak the radio under her covers at night, and just sing and try to find peace within the music. During elementary school, she excelled in subjects that she enjoyed, such as music, art, and literature, but did not find interest in others. After several years of financial struggles, Patricia earned enough money to move her family into a stable and more affluent sector in New York. Carey had begun writing poems and adding melodies to them, thus starting as a singer-songwriter while attending Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, where she graduated in 1987. Carey excelled in her music, and demonstrated usage of the whistle register, though only beginning to master and control it through her training with her mother. Though introducing her daughter to classical opera, Patricia never pressured her to pursue a career in it, as she never seemed interested. Carey recalled that she kept her singer-songwriter works a secret and noted that Patricia had "never been a pushy mom. She never said, 'Give it more of an operatic feel.' I respect opera like crazy, but it didn't influence me." While in high school, Carey began writing songs with Gavin Christopher. They needed an assistant who could play the keyboard: "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben Margulies. Ben came to the studio, and he really couldn't play the keyboards very well — he was really more of a drummer — but after that day, we kept in touch, and we sort of clicked as writers."16 Carey and Christopher began writing and composing songs in the basement of his father's store during Carey's senior year. After composing their first song together, "Here We Go 'Round Again," which Carey described as having a Motown vibe, they continued writing material for a full-length demo. She began living in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, which she shared with four other female students. Carey worked as a waitress for various restaurants, usually getting fired after two weeks. While requiring work to pay for her rent, Carey still had musical ambitions, as she continued working late into the night with Margulies in hopes of completing a demo. After completing her four song demo tape, Carey attempted to pass it to music labels, but failed each time. Shortly thereafter, she was introduced to rising pop singer Brenda K. Starr. Career jj 2014: Signing on Faded Records, the release of The Stygian Chevalier and Chiaroscuro Nightingale f 2015: The Unholy Alliance and ''Atavism'' During early 2015, Mariah Carey announced her return into the music scene with the soundtrack single 'The Unholy Alliance'. The song was written and produced for the movie Black Mass, which features actor Johnny Depp in it. Featuring an orchestral sound, the song was a departure from her previous works, both sonically and lyrically. She also went on to work with Paul Epworth, who's known to have worked with the likes of Adele and Coldplay. The soundtrack single was a smash right out of the block, debuting at #2 on the single charts with over 500,000 copies sold during its debut week. The single ascended to the top of the charts in its second week, where it sold an excess of 800,000 copies. The single continued its reign at the top for another week, where it sold an excess of 1,200,000 copies. Although Mariah Carey did promote the soundtrack single on a worldwide scale, the exponential success and longevity of the soundtrack single surprised both Mariah Carey and her label, and further solidified Mariah's reign. By the end of its chart run, the soundtrack single already sold an excess of 6 million copies worldwide, making it Mariah's best-selling single in years. The Unholy Alliance went on to win Record Of The Year at the 2016 Grammy Awards, giving Mariah her very first major Grammy award since her win as Best New Artist back in the 1991 Grammy Award show. Following the success of The Unholy Alliance, went rogue and flew to Bahamas to record her next record. However, it wasn't until the Super Bowl that news relating to Mariah emerged. A cryptic commercial was aired at the Super Bowl featuring a Motown sound playing within the background. The commercial features Mariah as she states "A new era begins". As the hype campaign slowly begins to emerge and spread through different sites such as Spotify. As the hype for a new Mariah single begins, Mariah Carey dropped her lead single off her album titled 'Whisper' on the 23rd of June 2015. The single debuted at #1 worldwide and broke records that was set at the time. Although the lead single didn't sell as much as The Unholy Alliance by the end of its chart run, it still went on to sell an excess of 3 million copies worldwide. 2016: Clean Slate, Legal battle with Sony Music Entertainment and the Arcane series ff 2017-Present: Arcane ff